Restoring my site collections to production environment, how to delete all the site collection test data

Question

I did the following :-

1. Inside my Development environment. I have created a new SharePoint application 2013. Containing two site collection ; community site & team site.

2. I have backup these two site collection from th development environment.

3. On the staging server. I create a new SP 2013 web application. I restore the two site collection.

4. Now I have prepared the production server. And I am planning to backup the site collection from the staging server and restore them into the production server.

But I have the following concern:-

1. Is there a way to restore blank site collections on the production server, without having any data ?

Answer 1

1. Please have look at the SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard.

2. You could create a template of lists, libraries, and sites that includes all of the settings , but no content, and then using those templates you can create the List and Libraries in the Production environment.

3. You could copy the site collection with contents, and then clean it up manually.

4. Finally you should look for some third party tool or some custom development like console application to delete all the lists/libraries items.

Hope this helps you.

Answer 2

My suggestion is for you to investigate Sharegate as an option.

It has a GUI that allows you to select what you want to copy and is really easy to use and has great support team.

We recommend it for our clients as it is a very powerful tool that also supports scripting if desired.

There is a trial option (partial copy) available from their site that has full functionality for you to check it out.